from Chapter 11
“Simply put … I had become a broken heart. As winter moved into spring, then spring into summer, I found myself losing the man I loved. I was falling or had fallen out of a story. The story of a love I wanted very much. Too much, probably, and the pain of loss had deranged me. Falling out of a story hurts. But it’s nothing compared to the loss of an actual person – the loss of all the bright details that make up that person. All the flashing, radiant fragments that constitute an affair or a love. If there has been a betrayal, you may find yourself holding each of these fragments up to a new light and rotating them there, watching each one grow an unwanted shadow. I found myself there.

-Maggie Nelson